Page 2 - Regina Krahl, Green Wares of Southern China

Green Wares of Southern China

Regina Krahl

The green wares of southern China are the world’s oldest ceramics that are hard, dense, and
durable—the ultimate predecessors of porcelain. China is unique in its development of these
stonewares, which preceded any comparable products in the West by almost 3,000 years. The
igneous rocks and volcanic ashes left in particular in the southeastern provinces of Jiangsu,
Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong from volcanic activity some 140 million years ago constitute
highly suitable raw materials for producing such wares. They often can be used more or less as
mined or can be easily processed by levigation, in which coarse particles are sifted out.1

The potters’ decisive step towards the creation of porcelain was therefore not an improved
recipe for the ceramic material but the development of a wood-burning kiln that could achieve
high enough firing temperatures (greater than 1,200 degrees C) to make the material “vitrify,”
i.e., melt into an impermeable, hard substance. The origins of such “high-fired” wares can be
traced to China’s Bronze Age, after the middle of the second millennium BCE. The earliest
glazes on these stonewares developed naturally due to wood ash falling onto the hot vessel
surface during firing, where it could react with the clay and melt into a glaze. Such fortuitous
appearances of “kiln gloss” were imitated by mixing wood ash with clay slips to create proper
lime glazes that could be applied more evenly over the vessel before firing. Due to the iron
content in these mixtures, the glazes turned olive green in the kiln.

The ceramics recovered from the Belitung wreck include some 900 pieces of green-glazed
stoneware from southern China, comprising a large group of massive storage containers and
a smaller number of tablewares. The former served as packing cases for more valuable goods
and were probably not intended for sale on their own; they may have been reused for several
voyages. The latter constituted a precious part of the cargo. These fine green tablewares
come from two different coastal regions in the southeast of China: from areas in Zhejiang,
south of Shanghai, and in Guangdong, east of Guangzhou (Canton), both closely situated to
international ports.

Among the earliest workshops for green-glazed stonewares are those of the Yue region
of Zhejiang province. Yuezhou is the historical name of the area around Shaoxing, south of
Hangzhou Bay, where kilns have operated at least since early historic times (the Shang dynasty,
circa 1600–circa 1050 BCE). In the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), the wares began to display
a distinct style and identity. During the Six Dynasties period (220–589) the kilns’ production was
boosted in quality and quantity when all six southern dynasties chose nearby Nanjing as their
capital. But in spite of its excellent quality, which had no match in China or anywhere else in the
world, this ceramic ware—like all ceramics at that time—does not seem to have been regarded very
highly for either its aesthetic or practical value and instead was used mainly for burial purposes.

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